Writer offering free CGC variants at next month's NYCC

In this fluff-coated Variety interview, a writer named Matt Dinniman, author of Dungeon Crawler Carl, is said to be offering free graded variant covers of his comic that's based on a novel:

Attention, Crawlers! Collectibles grading company CGC is teaming up with “Dungeon Crawler Carl” author Matt Dinniman for the release of a free exclusive variant cover of his comic book series at New York Comic Con next month.

From Oct. 8-11, CGC will offer a limited-edition “Dungeon Crawler Carl” #0 variant featuring newly commissioned artwork by “The Mask” and “Aliens” artist Doug Mahnke at its NYCC booth, where Dinniman and Mahnke are both set to make signing appearances.

Even if this is a free sample they're offering, what's troubling is that it appears to be "slabbed", and suggests they're experimenting with a new gimmick for catering to the speculator market, using something not unlike a freebie from FCBD events.

Adapted from Dinniman’s bestselling litRPG novel series of the same name and published as a webcomic and in print through Vault Comics, the “Dungeon Crawler Carl” comic book is a postapocalyptic story that follows the titular Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they’re thrust into a deadly game-show-style dungeon where survival depends on wit, grit and leveling up fast.

“Comics are still new to me, and it’s surreal to see all these awesome artists coming together to make badass art in the ‘DCC’ universe,” Dinniman said. “Doug’s cover stands out, and I’m forever grateful an artist like that wants to work on something I created.”

CGC and JSA return to NYCC this year as the convention’s official grading and authentication services. Per CGC, fans submitting eligible collectibles to CGC for grading at the brand’s NYCC booth (CGC Booth #2805, CGC Signature Series & JSA Booth #HB906) will be able to receive the exclusive “Carl” variant for free, limited to one per person while supplies last.

“We’re giving this variant away because we want the fans who’ve followed Dungeon Crawler Carl from the beginning to be the ones who get it first,” CGC’s vice president of comic book grading, Shawn Caffrey, said. “That’s always been the idea behind our program — put incredible art directly into collectors’ hands, free, and let them be part of the moment a series like this breaks wide open.”

But why a variant rather than the story itself? Something's very awry here, and while artwork obviously is a vital part of the process, that doesn't mean they should be turning it out at the expense of the story and entertainment value, and if they're giving away the variant issues in slabbing cases, that certainly makes the whole move look ridiculous. Also note how the author of the original novel, Dinniman, is just getting into the business, and it only suggests even more than he lacks confidence in actually selling the adaptation as much as the original formats. As a result, this news only insults the intellect, because it's not clear if merit is actually the name of the game here.

So of course, you have to wonder if some novelists really are getting into comicdom because they consider it a legitimate medium for their creations. Mr. Dinniman's not off to a good start in proving he sees it that way.

Variety also asked:

What was the process like working with Matt Dinniman on the art? Fans know these characters so well already that remaining text accurate while also having artistic license could be difficult.

Doug approached the cover with a real respect for Matt’s world — the characters, the tone and all of those details “Dungeon Crawler Carl” fans know so well. That gave him the foundation to bring his own distinctive artistic style to the cover while still making it feel unmistakably DCC. David Baron’s colors really bring the finished piece to life, and we think fans are going to love what they created together.

“Dungeon Crawler Carl” #0 has already been released, but this will be the first opportunity for fans to get a Doug Mahnke “DCC” variant. That makes being able to debut it at New York Comic Con especially exciting.

But it still sounds like a cross between speculator collecting and FCBD distribution, instead of asking the audience to buy the whole comic proper. I'm sorry, but they're still failing to convince they're doing this because they believe the medium's a worthy venture.

More propaganda being published in favor of NYC's illegal-immigrant-pandering comic

The New York Times (archive link) published a puff piece favorable to NYC's propaganda comic that sides with illegal immigration, and against ICE. Worst, in case it wasn't mentioned before, its writer and artist are veterans of the regular industry:

As New York City middle school and high school students return to classrooms this term, they are receiving access to “Know Your Rights,” an educational comic book that prepares individuals for encounters with federal law enforcement officers.

It is the latest release by Civics for All, a program of the city schools’ department of social studies and civics. The program began in 2020 and now includes 45 comics. The print run of “Know Your Rights” is 140,000 — half in English, half in Spanish. It is also available digitally in 14 languages.

The comic presents vignettes, based on real events, about encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including guidance specific to New York City that emphasizes knowing your legal options at home, at work or walking to school. In easy-to-follow scenes with clear and brightly colored artwork, the story gives readers legal hotline numbers, and advice on planning ahead, organizing documents and memorizing emergency contact information.

“Know Your Rights,” written by Alex Segura and drawn by David Hahn, was suggested by members of Project Open Arms, a city school system effort to support immigrants, including asylum seekers. They saw value in helping students and families understand the rights that come with being an undocumented person.

I think Hahn drew stories for Bill Willingham's Fables series years ago, and wonder what the latter thinks of having worked with such leftists today, if they were going to go miles out of their way and throw their support behind tales that're hurtful to the USA? As for Segura, he's been quite the left-wing propagandist himself for some time, and he worked at Archie in the past 15 years, where I'm sure he had plenty of grimy stuff to foist on it.

Using comics and graphic novels in schools is not new. “Maus,” by Art Spiegelman, in the 1990s “broke a lot of barriers in terms of the acceptance of comics,” Hillary Chute, an English professor at Northeastern University, who specializes in comics and graphic narratives, said in an interview. She was a graphic novels columnist for The New York Times Book Review from 2018 to 2022.

I'm sure the citation of Maus was deliberate too, based on Spiegelman's leftism. After all, who in the MSM cares today about Will Eisner's GNs like A Contract With God? They don't think that broke any barriers by contrast, right? Surprisingly, the NYT's writer does give space for a conservative to comment on the propaganda comic:

Jennifer Weber, a fellow specializing in education policy at the Manhattan Institute, the conservative think tank, said in an interview that using comics is not a bad thing, but that “Know Your Rights” portrays immigrants as the protagonists and ICE as the antagonists, which is “one-sided.”

For civics lessons, “I would say that you would absolutely need to understand the other side,” she continued, adding that the comic misses an opportunity to teach readers about why ICE was formed and to showcase Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.

But that's not what the propagandists bankrolling this comic at City Hall are doing, and under Zohran Mamdani, things have become much worse with the propaganda ramped up, all at the expense of decent Americans. And then they even have professional comics writers/artists come in and contribute to the damage they're inflicting, with Segura fluff-coating the procedures:

Segura said that writing this comic “felt really important,” adding that it provides valuable information “because we are experiencing a spike in activity from nonmunicipal law enforcement, namely ICE and organizations like that, where it’s imperative not only for kids, but their families and friends to know what their rights are and what the city can do to protect and help them.”

Politics aside, the aim of the comic is to inform. “People should know their rights, right?” Carlin asked. “That shouldn’t be controversial.”

Nor should it be controversial to prevent violent criminals from entering the USA, should it? And Europe? Also, doesn't anybody consider 911 Families, and how the memories of their beloved relatives are being let down and desecrated? Well Segura and Hahn certainly haven't, and this propaganda comic that supposedly "informs" only adds insult to injury. They're even hurting law enforcement whose goal is to ensure safety, and making NYC all the more an insufferable place to live. What "valuable" info does this comic give? And why is the angle of the comic that important in contrast to actual victims of crime, in NYC and elsewhere?

The business of Midnight Comics

The Atlanta Voice interviewed Lloyd and Natasha Jones, the owners of Midnight Comics, an African-American publisher:

The married couple in question, Lloyd and Natasha Jones, started Midnight Comics on August 5, 2020, and six years later, the brand is flourishing.

After dropping off the latest issues of “The Grey,” “Sol,” and “Tales From Midnight,” Natasha fiddled with a copy of “The Omnibus,” a massive tome of the writing pair’s works combined with the many illustrators they have hired to bring their words to life.

“This is everything we’ve written in the past 5 years,” said Llyod.

Asked what it means to own a Black comic book company with his wife, Lloyd said the art of bringing his and his wife’s thoughts to life is a “dream come true.”

“It’s personally a passion. We both love telling stories, and I have a lot of stories I want to get out,” Lloyd said. [...]

Natasha, the quieter of the pair, is a writer first and foremost. She said that she enjoys creating the characters of the Midnight Comics universe and watching them evolve as the illustrators take her notes and bring them to life on paper. [...]

No comic book character arc is complete without an origin story and a moment of clarity. For Midnight Comics, that moment came during Atlanta Comic Con 2021, a year after they began the business. Despite not being one of the household names, their table at Atlanta Comic Con was always busy. So much so that they ran out of comics.

“The way those books were flying off the shelves. We were like Ok this is the moment,” Lloyd said.

Asked what the most fun part of being business owners and artists has been, Natasha said, “For me, the creation of the characters, building their personalities has been the most fun part.”

And in addition to having a successful business, we have a woman who's evidently finding success too. They'd be wise not to lend their talents to Marvel and DC so long as the Big Two are still dominated by PC-advocates. If Midnight's got some good stories to offer packed with merit, I'll buy some of their books in paperback/hardcover, and for now, wish them good luck in continuing to build up their publisher.

How is Elektra suddenly "scarier" than Punisher and Wolverine?

According to this brief on Softonic about new Daredevil issues, Elektra takes out a whole villainous mob without killing them:

In Daredevil #6 and #7, Stephanie Phillips and Lee Garbett fold Elektra into this new Marvel run by making one thing immediately clear: she’s dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with piling up the highest body count. “Of Moles & Owls” doesn’t sell her as deadlier than the Punisher or Wolverine in the usual numbers game. What’s unnerving about her is something else. She’s so exact, so disciplined, so tactical that she cuts through Mister Negative’s Inner Demons and leaves every last one of them alive. That’s the real point. Elektra decides exactly how much damage gets done, and she never loses control of it.

The issues also have her outplaying multiple factions as she works to secure Wilson Fisk’s ledger during a Hell’s Kitchen war that pulls in Silvermane, Tombstone, Hammerhead’s goons, and the Inner Demons. It makes the city feel like a live-fire chessboard, with Elektra still thinking several moves ahead of everyone else on it. If you’ve been following the noir-leaning, street-level direction Daredevil has taken since Stephanie Phillips and Lee Garbett launched their run in March 2026, these issues are easy to recommend. Even if Elektra’s return reads more like a sharp cameo than a full-blown comeback, issue #8 is already lining up Mister Fear, a drug threat at Empire State University (E.S.U.), and more questions tied to Wilson Fisk’s ledger.

Unfortunately, that doesn't make the story immediately entertaining. There's plenty of other superheroines who could've been written doing the same thing too, like Wonder Woman, Jesse Quick, Spider-Woman, Donna Troy, Invisible Girl, Psylocke, and Kitty Pryde. All that matters is whether it's written well, and at Marvel today, it's much too late for that. Plus, what if it turns out the artwork in this DD run is as terrible as some of the past decade's offerings?

This brief also ignores that there were times when the Punisher refrained from killing in order to appease Spider-Man, and it's not like Wolverine was depicted killing in all instances either. So why does Softonic think this news is going to automatically impress anybody, especially when the article doesn't seem written on merit?

Spider-Man comics sadly can no longer define Marvel as they used to, because of PC and editorial mandates

A writer at ComicBook continues the site's unfortunate leanings towards tabloid superficiality, this time taking an almost hilariously superficial look at Spidey's history and whitewashing the mistakes made since the turn of the century. For example:

Villains are one of the most important parts of superhero comics; as they say, a hero is only as good as his enemies. Marvel has been the home to some amazing villains over the decades and if we’re being honest, the Wall-Crawler has some of the best antagonists out there. Spider-Man’s villains have been amazing from the start, animal-based gimmick villains who take the idea of “science gone wrong” that is so important to Peter Parker’s mythos and use it in novel ways. Villains have played a massive role in making Spider-Man as popular as he is. Spidey is constantly playing off his enemies and he needs to have villains that make for both exciting stories and great character interplay with the webslinging hero. Spider-Man books have proven Marvel’s most fertile ground for villains, with bad guys springing up that have changed comics forever. The Marvel Universe would be very different without his fantastic rosters of foes and not in a good way.

Umm, there's plenty of other Marvel series where formidable villains were created, and with talented writing to accompany them, an entertaining story could result. I love Spidey as much as the next person, but I'm not going to say no other Marvel comic produced villains as durable as those seen in Spidey's comics. Though I should remind that villains alone are not the reason to read such books, and shouldn't be placed on a higher level of appreciation than the heroes. And telling us heroes are only as good as their enemies is no substitute for merit-based writing.

Oh, and since we're on the subject, by the mid-80s, the Kingpin, who first appeared in Spidey around 1967, was starting to make more appearances in comics like Daredevil. Wilson Fisk may have begun as a Spidey adversary, but later on became more notable as a recurring villain in DD's stories. And Kraven the Hunter was later written committing suicide in 1987's "Kraven's Last Hunt" storyline, so it's not like all villains lasted forever at a time when Marvel had meaning. That said, they do cite supporting casts:

Supporting casts have been important since the beginning, when characters like Lois Lane, Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and many more added some much-needed spice to superhero stories. Over the years, readers have come to expect amazing supporting casts from their favorite books, especially at Marvel. The House of Ideas has always showcased more human heroes, with the trials of their superhero life coloring their civilian lives, and the best example of a stellar supporting cast in the Marvel Universe comes from Spidey’s comics. We’ve gotten numerous best of all-time supporting characters from his books – Aunt May, Mary Jane, J. Jonah Jameson, Robbie Robertson, Harry Osborn, Ben Urich, Ned Leeds, Betty Brant, Liz Allen, and so many more – with the best of them showing why supporting casts are so important to superhero comics. Spidey’s supporting cast has added so much to his books, allowing creators to take the stories in directions they couldn’t have otherwise went. One of the main reasons you expect so much from Marvel supporting casts is that the Spider-Man comics have been spoiling readers with the best supporting cast in the business for decades.

Interesting they should bring this up, because if memory serves, J. Michael Straczynski made very little use out of the most notable recurring cast members in Spidey in his overrated 2001-07 run, and Mary Jane Watson was kicked to the curb nearly 2 decades ago, while all these propagandists waffled around, and, while it obviously wouldn't be something to be happy about doing, they said nothing about whether a boycott would be the best direction to take if that could help get the Spider-marriage restored, and any or all undeserving staff members dismissed from Marvel.

And what's this about more human heroes? That too was massively destroyed in the past quarter century or more, as heroes and co-stars actually had humanity stripped from them by ways of contrived writing, and having cynicism and other shoddy character traits forced upon them. IIRC, Marvel may have been trying to convince the audience to dislike Mary Jane by forcing an irritating personality upon her in 1999, and in the end, One More/Brand New Day really buried whatever convincing personalities Marvel once had for their casts. If the editors and writers wanted to turn MJ into a villainess for real, it's entirely possible they'd do it, and certainly came close with the shoddy story where she was forced into the Venom glop.

With the rise of cinematic superhero universes and geek culture, you’d assume that it’s easier than ever to become a comic fan, but this isn’t the case. Not every town has a comic store and that’s merely the first of some rather large hurdles you have to get over. Another rather large one is just how daunting comics can be to the average fan. Marvel Comics has some amazing gateway books, but even after reading those, it can be hard to pick out who to start with. Spider-Man, though, has proven to be one of the best characters to kick off your comic journey with. To begin with, he was given one of the greatest origins in comics, one that’s simple to understand and can be the catalyst for the best stories you can imagine. He’s an extremely relatable character – a guy with low self esteem using his powers to fight crime as his life falls apart around him is basically how everyone is living in 2026. His supporting cast makes you feel at home immediately. The Amazing Spider-Man is one of those books that is always among the first books that any comic fan buys, the perfect primer on why superhero comics so much fun to read.

In that case, why not recommend the Epic Collection archives collecting Spidey's adventures from the past century, or even the Omnibuses? If they believe only the newest items in stores matter, they're not serious about recommendations. Also, what's "relatable" about a character who made a deal with Mephisto in One More Day? And then, they even fawn over the Ultimate line, and the DEI propaganda it wound up emphasizing:

I have a friend who mostly only buys comics when he think they’re going to be “key issues” and I remember him being one of the first people to talk to me about the death of the first Ultimate Spider-Man in the early ’10s. Ultimate Spider-Man had always been the most popular Ultimate characters and lots of fans were reticent about his death; the Ultimate books were already mostly dead and a lot of fans figured that this would be the end for them. However, instead, we got an all-new Spider-Man in Miles Morales. Miles was able to grow his fanbase on his own in a universe where he was the main Spider-Man and it worked better than anyone could have imagined. Fans loved him so much that he would end up surviving the end of the Ultimate Universe and joining the 616. There was the chance that this wouldn’t work out for him, but instead of losing his popularity, he became bigger than ever. The Spider-Man books were able to do something that few other comics have – introduce a second character that stays popular even when readers can just read the adventures of the original instead. It’s a huge achievement that we don’t really praise enough.

This is all we need to know just how biased they are, and all delivered without sales figures to prove their empty point. What next, will they sugarcoat and recommend Jason Aaron's own woke pandering? And then, lastly:

Being a Spider-Man fan isn’t always great. There’s something about Spider-Man’s comic in that when things get bad, they get really, really bad. A big part of this is the simplest – his books sell regardless; there’s no reason to listen to fan complaints as long as they’re still buying the book. Anyone out there who has been a part of the online comic community for any period of time has encountered the often hyperbolic hatred for the hero’s comics, especially since “One More Day” did away with his marriage to Mary Jane. In the last 19 years (yes, it’s been that long), fans hated Spider-Man comics more than anything, especially if you were just going by the stuff said in comment sections. However, when you went to the sales charts, The Amazing Spider-Man was always one of the bestselling comics out there. It’s only been in the last year or so that it’s not been consistently at the top of the sales charts; now, it’s merely in the top ten. Spidey comics are able to survive fan ire like no other. There’s no other character that could have fans as angry as The Amazing Spider-Man has and survive. It’s one of the most interesting things about Spider-Man – when his fans are complaining the loudest, his book is usually selling like hot cakes.

Well at least here, they hint at a leading problem explaining why things got so bad: because you have only so many fools out there, doubtlessly including tons of speculators, who won't judge by merit and keep buying Spidey no matter how much this makes it impossible to ever see the Spider-marriage restored. That said, even Spidey sales have long plummeted, and I remember that, when sales figures were visible at ICV2, the sales appeared to have dropped under 100,000 copies allegedly sold. Unfortunately, Marvel's modern management is so blatant, they're clearly willing to keep churning out Spidey and other now maligned comics no matter how poorly they sell in the end.

And what's this about "hatred" for Spidey's comics? That's only in the context of that the story in a current issue is bottom of the barrel, and they still force a mandate forbidding restoration of the Spider-marriage, and improving respect for Mary Jane as a character. It's obvious MJ's of no value to the columnist, or he would've championed the Spider-marriage, pro-MJ supporters long ago instead of writing such drivel. So why write such fawning garbage? All it does is compound how unserious ComicBook really is as a news site, and how creatively bankrupt they are themselves. They're an utter embarrassment. They're yet another reason why Spidey no longer defines pop culture itself.

What the Harvard Independent says about comics history

A writer at the Harvard Independent tells some history of how comics began as far back as a few centuries ago, and cites one of the most questionable European comics as something her parents got her into reading:

They also gave me a love for comics. Alongside traditional novels, I read the pre-teen series “Percy Jackson,” “The Adventures of Tintin,” and Japanese manga. I remember my dad buying “The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons,” two heavy tomes I spent hours paging through, wondering when I would finally understand the jokes I didn’t get yet.

My enthusiasm for comics is far from unique; many aficionados are far more dedicated to collecting and discussing comic books. “Tintin” has had relatively low popularity in the United States, so I never had much reason—or company—to expand beyond rereading my favorite issues.

That's interesting if Tintin wasn't big in the USA in her time, and considering how severely questionable its ideological viewpoints were, that's why it didn't really matter. It just wasn't all it could've been is probably one way of putting it. Another subject brought up is pretty surprising, however:

The first large-scale combination of pictures and words was—unsurprisingly for the Western world—the Bible. In the 1830s, London mass-printed “The Pictorial Bible.” Though illustrated Bibles had existed since the 15th century, none were as thorough as this version, which featured a picture accompanying almost every major scene; the number of illustrations leaped from around 30 to hundreds. Woodblock carvings, which required a huge initial investment in artists, accompanied biblical verses, but advances in printing technology let printers reproduce them quickly.

The goal of such a labor-intensive yet inexpensive Bible was to reach the largely illiterate masses of the time. Though literacy increased significantly in the next hundred years, only about half of England could read at the end of the 19th century. Even for literate Christians, a widely distributed pictorial Bible would have solidified iconography, characters, and settings in the common imagination.

Though the concept of a “comic” had not been invented yet, this biblical form foreshadows the reasons comics and graphic novels became so popular and pervasive as storytelling methods. They not only help readers understand a work’s core scenes and themes but also create cohesive interpretations. In turn, this makes discussion smoother (though not necessarily broader), allowing tight-knit communities to form around the same story.

I'm surprised a university paper that's bound to be as left-wing as you could expect would be willing to bring up religious themes in the topic, considering how badly minimized the Bible's been for surely even long before the turn of the century. That's certainly one credible achievement this article's making.

It would be a disservice to the genre to fail to discuss comics in the Eastern Hemisphere. Manga, a Japanese form of comics, has gained widespread popularity worldwide in recent years. The history of illustrative mediums in Japan is also tied to religion, as the first widespread pictures were created by a Buddhist monk in the 12th and 13th centuries. As Europeans came into contact with Japan, so did their artistic techniques, including the political cartoon. From then on until World War II, Japanese manga heavily featured political themes, especially nationalist ones, as well as inspirations from traditional folklore.

Japan’s defeat in the war led to a decrease in militaristic imagery, especially with the influence of manga artist Osamu Tezuka, who was inspired by American Disney movies and superhero comics. This movement helped the genre become the world’s best-selling comic format in the 21st century, surpassing the American-born Marvel Comics.

Interesting she puts it that way, because in a way, yes, manga's long surpassed even DC in sales, due to how both company managements destroyed the coherency and impact of their products, with distortions of continuity just the beginning of their downfall. So is it any wonder manga became more popular? Of course, even that may not last, and depending on the subject matter, certainly not if they start taking up the kind of Orwellian tactics that brought down much of USA comicdom.

Though many still dismiss comics as a juvenile genre, the combination of text and visual art can often tell a story more powerfully than either medium alone. “Maus” by Art Spiegelman is an autobiographical graphic novel about his experiences as the son of a Holocaust survivor. The medium allowed him to use animal heads as a visual allegory for different groups of people without ascribing human facial features. “Maus” was introduced as a comic in 1972 and published in book format in 1986, eventually winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. The recognition “Maus” received helped legitimize the graphic novel in the eyes of the public and academics, allowing future comic artists to tell their stories using this hybrid medium.

I think it was in 1980 when the beginnings of Maus first saw print, but what's regrettable here is Spiegelman's far-left politics, which dampen the impact it could've had, and it's disturbing how Spiegelman minimized 9-11 more recently. If he doesn't consider what occurred a quarter century ago a serious concern, it's hard to believe he's really serious about his concerns over what happened during WW2, or even WW1. Also, why does she say Maus validated the GN, but not the late Will Eisner's A Contract With God, which came much earlier? Seriously, it sounds too much like she doesn't have what it takes to research what could be a more challenging example. Spiegelman's an easy choice.

Anyway, the citation of the Bible is certainly interesting, and quite surprising for what again is surely a left-wing college paper, but apart from that, this is an article that's decidedly too reliant on easy examples, and not enough on harder, more challenging ones, and ultimately doesn't explore how artistic quality was brought down in the mainstream for starters. As a result, it's hard to believe people like these are really fans of the medium if they won't voice concerns about what went wrong over past years.

New X-Men film director appears to be adapting writings of Jonathan Hickman

According to this IGN article, Jason Schreier, the director of a new X-Men movie (and previously the Thunderbolts), is basing his screenplay on not one, but two sources, the 2nd not a good one:

The filmmaker leading the charge on what seems to be the first post-Avengers: Secret Wars movie spoke about some of the corners of the mutant universe he and MCU boss Kevin Feige have already started digging through during an interview with Good Morning America. The conversation followed the film's explosive D23 2026 X-Men cast reveal, which included announcements for characters like Rogue, Storm, Professor X, and Mister Sinister.

With its May 2028 release still almost two years away, Schreier, who previously helmed Marvel's Thunderbolts*, stopped short of revealing too much about the movie's plot. Instead, his comments suggested fans may want to brush up on the work of comic book authors Chris Claremont and Jonathan Hickman.

"One of the great things about the comics is there is such a rich and broad history," he said. "That was one of the first things that Kevin and I talked about when I came in; they made many great movies in this world, and they've made so many great things. Let's find the things that haven't recently been done well. All these other corners of the universe…"

"Digging back into those comics like 20 years, the whole Chris Claremont run, the newer Jonathan Hickman stuff. There are so many stories that are still untold, to honor and to reach into, and then to meet this cast and try to do something new, I think you always want to see something that reveres where it came from and then is still taking a new spin on where we want to go."

Considering the Thunderbolts movie, spelled as it is with an asterisk, is one of those things that hasn't been done well, I'm not sure what Schreier's point is. Hickman's run was overrated, right down to the part where he turned Moira MacTaggart into yet another mutant, which takes away the uniqueness of the character as a civilian co-star. Does Schreier intend to make use of that?

In any case, I've long grown weary of these non-stop live action adaptations, and Schreier's claim there's a rich and broad history is another example of failing to make distinctions between any era. He likely doesn't care that X-Men began to lose mileage when crossovers like Age of Apocalypse came about. Or that Scott Lobdell was considered a very mediocre writer back in the day. Or that the X-books overall began to lose any meaning or significance by the turn of the century, and even Claremont's talent plummeted post-2000. So what's the use of keeping on with the films, when the comics are in such bad shape as it is due to editors like Joe Quesada bringing them down years ago?

Filmmaker Zack Snyder continues to discuss his comics-to-film adaptations

Variety interviewed film director Snyder, who's moved on from adapting comics to other projects, but still discusses his prior visions and how the industry's dealt with the adaptations since, while simultaneously discussing his latest movie, "The Last Photograph", which, unfortunately, is dark and sounds easily darker than the comics adaptations he directed, which is why a description of the new film may have to be highlighted here first:

The most common criticism I’ve seen is that there is a lot of violence and brutality toward women in the film and that it was excessive, which has led to accusations of misogyny being leveled against you. What do you say to that?

I mean, I don’t know. First of all, I would argue that the violence toward women and men is equal and that nobody is spared — men, women, children, everybody. The justice that’s doled out in the movie is in the same way that a hurricane doles out justice. To try and superimpose morality over it and want the violence to mean something — the meaning is that violence doesn’t work and doesn’t get anything done.

It really doesn't make much difference whether the men and women both suffer equally. What matters is that Snyder's given another clue to what problems he has with his MO: too much obsession with darkness. And who knows, based on that last line, if he's trying to say it doesn't work even when the goodies employ it as corporal punishment for what horrors the baddies committed? Now, here's a part that appears to discuss the otherwise unsuccessful Justice League film:

And to have this be added to it.

It was so loud — that part was so loud — that, in retrospect, asking, “How’s the movie going?” And they go, “Oh, it’s fine! They’re doing some reshoots.” And I go, “Oh, OK. Fuck it.” So, Debbie went and watched the Joss [Whedon] version of the movie, and to have her come back to me and say, “You can never see that movie,” and to realize then that it was 60 pages of rewrites that they did for it… I’ve never seen the movie, so I don’t know.

You’ve never seen Joss’ version?

I’ve never seen it. There was a point when the movie was released that was a low point for me because the pile-on effect was so insane. Not only did I lose my daughter, but also they’ve released this version of the movie that I had nothing to do with and my name is on a movie that I didn’t make.

Were you like, “What else?!”

“What else!” Literally. But there was this catharsis of, I met with this executive at Warner Bros. who’s long gone since — I won’t say who it was — and he said to me, “You know, Zack, I’ve got to tell you one thing: You were right about everything.” And I was like, “That’s kind of you.” And he goes, “We were fighting you, and in the end you were right.”

What were they fighting you on?

The whole vision for the DC universe and the way I made movies and everything. They did this attempt to control it — and I’m just talking about the regime that was there that’s no longer there. They had this massive IP that’s worth a ton and I can understand wanting to protect it as best they could since all their jobs depended on it working, and they’d put it in the hands of a madman — or so they thought — so the part of them thinking that, and this is going to sound horrible, “This thing that happened to Zack is a window for us to take the movie back now.”

Seriously, they "protected" it? If they had, even Identity Crisis wouldn't have been published, nor would Geoff Johns have been hired as a writer, or even Brian Bendis. Oddly enough, what they did "protect" was an editorial mandate that Superman couldn't have red tights, until a PC selection like Bendis was allowed to restore it in the comics proper. It's something that's actually alluded to in the interview, which I'll get to soon, but for now:

I do want to know what your thoughts are on the current state of the DC Universe. Have you seen “Superman” or “Supergirl”?

I haven’t seen the movies. It’s a little bit too personal for me. Too soon, I guess you could say. I do like James [Gunn]. And I do have an appreciation for his [vision].

I wonder if Gunn and company used Snyder's premise of Superman killing Zod in 2013's Man of Steel movie as justification for having Supergirl kill the villain Krem in the new movie this year? The problem, of course, is that now, a different movie canon was set up, and in the context of what Gunn's producing, it makes Supergirl look awful, with less of a moral compass than Superman, since in the Silver/Bronze Age comics of the past century, her viewpoint and MO were little different from his. For now, it's got to be telling that Snyder's favorable to Gunn, considering that, even if the latter seemingly employed a more optimistic view than the former, the problem is that there were still subtle politics attached as strings, and that's not a good confidence builder. Now, about the costume issues:

He consulted with you on Superman’s suit, right?

He asked me a question about the underwear. You know, I can’t even remember now, but I think it was about the underwear. Sorry, but I’m going to do a little diatribe. “Watchmen” is a superhero deconstruction film — neuroses, sexual impotence around their costumes, the fetishism, everything. You can’t undo that. I think about everything that way. So, the underwear on the outside of the superhero costume comes from Victorian strongmen. The Victorians were so prudish that they’d wear flesh-colored leotards and then put the underwear over it. That’s how it started. It was really just a reflection of the Victorians not wanting to show any real skin due to their prudish fear of nakedness. So to me, that’s such a dinosaur. We don’t feel that way anymore. We live in an era where we’re OK without putting the underwear on. But maybe we’re not OK! Maybe the message is that you put the underwear back on Superman because we haven’t moved on from our Victorian prudishness. But I thought we had!

I wonder what Snyder thinks of how Warner Bros. denied him creative freedom for having the red tights be part of the movie costume, and then at least a few years later, all of a sudden, studio, publisher or both has the sheer audacity to have them restored post-New52, using a woke writer like Bendis as the justification? It's enough to wonder, Snyder went to all that trouble to make adaptations that don't exactly rate as classics today, all so the company could insult everybody's intellect with a "give and take" approach? Well, that's what the "diatribe" suggests. Interestingly, both interviewer and interviewee discuss the lack of sex in a lot of major movies today:

There is sex in your movie and there isn’t a lot of sex in movies anymore.

This is one of my big things: Sex in movies is weirdly gone. I don’t understand it.

And there’s plenty of sex on TV, but not in movies.

And it’s on TV! TV shows can have sex but movies, for whatever reason, can’t. What happened? I’m an ‘80s kid and grew up with “Body Heat,” “9 ½ Weeks.”

I’m a ‘90s kid and grew up with “Basic Instinct” and “The Last Seduction” and “Wild Things.”

Eroticism in movies has somehow been stomped out, and I don’t understand it. We watched “Excalibur” the other day and it’s a very sexy movie. It’s erotic.

Make Hollywood Movies Sexy Again.

Make them sexy again! I couldn’t agree more. I don’t know why TV gets a pass.

“Game of Thrones” had so much sex that it coined the term “sexposition.”

Crazy sex. Crazy sex.

Is it the MPAA?

I don’t know what it is. You know what needs to happen? The same thing that happened with the R-rated movie. So, R-rated movies now have lost their stigma — “The Odyssey,” “Obsession,” whatever it is. Now, we need an NC-17 movie that’s a hit.

Well they didn't impress me when they brought up Game of Thrones, because if memory serves, that has a lot of sexual violence in it, which only gives sex a bad name. Since they mention it, TV's still allowed to write up sex scenes? It remains to be seen if that'll last. For now, what I do know is that, if anybody's ever thought comics adaptations were an okay and/or challenging project in which to feature sex scenes, the woke crowd sure did a splendid job putting the kibosh on all that. They certainly made it difficult to make romance movies too, no matter the suitability level for children/family. IIRC, there may have been implied sex in the 1989 Batman movie, but since that time, most comics adaptations for the silver screen are far from taking such challenges. For now, Snyder simply doesn't understand that it's the very leftist crowd he comes from that's been pushing anti-sex propaganda for as much as a quarter century now, and it's led to a steep decline. Maybe what he could argue is that the time's come to give sex a more positive - if not perfect - name, and that could provide a more encouraging environment in which to explore the themes. Similarly, maybe somebody could argue that Japanese anime/manga producers have to give sex a better name too.

But what Snyder doesn't seem to discuss is that violence, by contrast, has increased in nearly all movie genres over the past decades, and even his own new movie seems to build on that. Perhaps it occurred to him that maybe the time's come to tone down the most graphic of violence for a change, and make distinctions between that and sex that's in good taste?

Now that you’ve made “The Last Photograph,” are there other films you’re still dying to make? Do you still want to make a “Rick and Morty” movie?

I do want to make a “Rick and Morty” movie. It would be fun. For the longest time, I’ve been trying to make “The Fountainhead” into a movie or into TV show because it’s too long. I’ve written it.

That’s not going to help with the right-wing allegations.

I was going to say! That’s not going to help. But it’s an undeniably great book. What people don’t realize is that “The Fountainhead” in the 1950s was like “Harry Potter” now in terms of popularity. It was off the charts. Even just the why of that is worth it. And “The Fountainhead” is an insane melodrama. That’ll probably be my magnum opus. I’ll probably die on that one. And “Escape From New York” is what we’re working on right now.

An important clue why Snyder quite possibly had no issue with stealthing a cameo by the Asian DEI replacement for Ray Palmer as the Atom, Ryan Choi, into the Justice League film, along with an important reminder that he's sadly not all that different from countless Hollywooders in his undoubtably leftist politics. On the other hand:

How did your Christian Science upbringing inform your superhero films? Because you do depict your superheroes as gods.

It’s this alchemy of Christian Science and Joseph Campbell — however you want to mix those together. Christian Science, in the end, is metaphysics. It’s probably closer to Buddhism than Western Christianity or Catholicism. It’s about the miraculous. The one thing about Christian Science is, it’s very much about: The works that I can do, you can do too. I’m the son of God but so are you. It’s very much, like, Jesus is just a dude who figured it out. That influence on Superman is that we’re him — in “Man of Steel,” especially. Yes, he’s godlike, but he still faces the exact same problems that we face. In the end, he loves his mother and wants to find love with Lois and have a job and be a person. Even though I do glorify the version of Superman at its best, I also try at the same time to put you in that position because I believe that we all are Supermen and we all are gods on Earth. I think that’s probably the influence in some ways.

Isn't the Christian Science sect the one that became notorious for refusing medical treatment, based on bizarre beliefs to the contrary? And this was what Snyder was raised under? Good grief. Superman may be depicted as bulletproof in past comics canon, but he was anything but impervious to pain, when one takes both Kryptonite and magic energies into consideration, which not many PC advocates today do. It's actually ill-advised to tout Superman as "godlike", because that only enforces what PC advocates like to weaponize in their efforts to belittle the Big Blue Boy Scout as "inferior" to Batman. Who, if memory serves, Snyder was more favorable to in some of his screenplay drafts. At the end of the interview:

You said once that the only way you’d do another superhero movie is if you could do an adaptation of Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns.”

The reason why it’s “The Dark Knight Returns,” if anyone would ever let me do it outside of the DC Universe since it’s a novel that just happens to have superheroes in it, is if I could do “Watchmen” and “Dark Knight Returns,” those two books next to each other, to me, represent the complete cycle of the superhero comic book medium. You can do no more than those two books. “Watchmen” came at the beginning of the superhero movie phase, so it would be super fitting to have “The Dark Knight Returns” come now, at what I would say is possibly — I don’t want to call it the twilight, but we’re down the road of the superhero movie genre, and I think audiences would understand the why of it. Let’s not forget: “The Dark Knight Returns” was written for a comic book audience that was very exhausted by comic books in the same way that “Watchmen” was, so having that movie written now for people who are exhausted by comic book movies would be a good time.

I'm so tired of hearing about DKR all over the place. Besides, didn't Miller later write 2-3 sequels and even a prequel in the past 2 decades, such as Last Crusade, Dark Knight Strikes Again, the Master Race and the Golden Child? They probably didn't get as good a reception as DKR got, yet they certainly helped overflood the market with more of the same cliches Miller's known for. If the audience is tired of superhero film fare, why should they care about yet another Batman movie of this sort either? Besides, most of the more recent superhero films aren't exactly built on the most inspiring story premises, and that's why you can't be surprised if their light's dimmed.

In the end, if there's something imporatant to say, it's that I'm most terribly sorry Snyder lost his daughter, and offer my condolences, but it doesn't change that he's one of the most overrated filmmakers of the modern era, his films are no big deal, and unlikely to register high in history records in decades to come. And then he goes right along and makes yet another violence-prone movie called The Last Photograph, and we're supposed to be impressed with the more noticable lurch to darkness? Please. That's as predictable as his own comics films turned out to be.